JANUARY

Social Media Launcher

Welcome to the January Launcher! Here you will find lots of ideas and inspiration to help you plan your social media content for the month ahead. This is a great place to start to create fabulous posts leading into the end of the year!

I’ll also be updating you on the latest social media news and trends, what’s working right now and how you can stay ahead of the curve and grow a thriving community of your own.

Events to tap into in January

Fresh starts, new beginnings, making changes, reflection and time to get healthy.

There’s heaps of inspiration to be found by looking at what events are coming up in the month ahead, and it’s a great excuse to add a fresh twist to your social media posts.

The added bonus is that many of these events will trend on social media during the day / week / month of the event, as well as the days leading up to it. Joining the conversation gives you the opportunity to get more eyes and engagement on your posts.

Pro tip: You don’t have to use every event… be selective but, equally, don’t write an event off based on first impressions. The down side of a trending topic is that there will be a lot of noise so the more creative you can be, the more you will stand out!

And remember, you can get more than one post out of a theme, topic or event so make the most of these opportunities.

I’ve included ideas for each of the events below to help get your creative juices flowing!

Festival of Sleep Day – 3rd January

Keep in mind: many of us have a tendency to go into the New Year all guns blazing, we’re already tired from the festivities and we run the risk of ending January exhausted and burnt out. Could you use the Festival of Sleep to give your crowd a reminder to slow down and to rest when they need to?

Get visual: think about how you could use emotive imagery to inspire action and encourage your crowd to take care of themselves. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sleep, rest can be just as restorative.

Hashtags: #festivalofsleep

Also around the corner…

What’s Working?

Each month I fill you in on what’s working particularly well on social media right now. Using this as a starting point, think about how you could put your own spin on these strategies.

· Get your broadcaster hat on! This year we’re going to see a transformation of video on social media, with YouTube and Facebook already leading the way on their mission to rival traditional television. Start thinking now about how you can introduce some mainstay ‘programming’ to your social media strategy – for example, it could be a weekly live broadcast on a certain topic which you run on a specific day each week. The goal is to get your followers tuning in regularly and actively seeking out your content when they want to catch up.

· Vary your Instagram hashtags – being consistent with the hashtags you use on your Instagram posts is definitely important but be sure to vary the hashtags you’re using from time to time as well. You may find that if you use the exact same list of hashtags on every post that your reach begins to suffer. A simple way to get around this is to create a handful of categories based on the different content that you share – you can have one hashtag list for each category and, although there may well be some crossover between lists, you should find that your posts reach more people this way.

I hope that this month's Social Media Launcher has you brimming with ideas and I can't wait to see you shine on social media in the month ahead!